As part of their graduation celebrations the students at McKinley High get to spend the night at a local amusement park where they're guaranteed to enjoy going on the rides, playing the games, and generally acting like nuisances. It's just your typical night out, but things are soon due to change when Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and her friends head towards the "Devil's Flight" rollercoaster and she has a premonition of the ride horribly crashing.

After freaking out and getting the back of the coaster emptied out of people (but, unfortunately, not her boyfriend who's sitting right at the front), her worst fears come true as the coaster does indeed crash killing everyone on board. Yes, that's right, another Final Destination movie - another opening set piece. And this one's not nearly as good as the plane crash of the original or even the highway crash that opened the second movie. It's shot in such a tight way we can barely make-out what's going on and the effects blue screen effects are pretty weak.

From here it's even more of the same as the people Wendy saved from the crash find themselves being hunted down and horribly killed by an unseen entity (you can tell it's coming by a cool breeze) while Wendy and her boyfriend's best friend Kevin (Ryan Merriman) try to uncover the pattern and "cheat death" yet again. Will they be in time? How many will die? Haven't we seen all this before?

Even though James Wong and Glen Morgan (Wong co-wrote and directed, Morgan co-wrote) of the original have returned for Final Destination 3, they didn't bring much in the way of originality with them as I found myself constantly sitting through frequent bouts of dull talking between the young cast members just waiting (with no anticipation, I might add) for the next person to die. And die they do. The death scenes have always been the main drawing card of the Final Destination series and while what's on display here just weren't as impressive as the first two films there was still quite a bit of nice, bloody nastiness on display as one person gets personal with a car's radiator fan, we see a cool scene involving a nail gun, and various other CGI enhanced demises.

In fact, if it wasn't for the deaths and Wong's steady direction there wouldn't have been much in Final Destination 3 for me. Winstead makes for the wimpiest heroine in the series, the script's lack of logic gets to be glaring at times, and it never once feels like anything more than a retread. That's not to say it didn't move at a quick pace or contain some nice looking kills, it's just starting to get a little bit tiring is all.

If you're a fan of the series, you'll no doubt get some form of enjoyment out of this third entry. If you're someone who likes a little bit of reality with your horror, you're probably better off skipping over this as it's nothing more than a mindless, and bearably bland, "popcorn flick" (Chris Hartley, 2/15/06)

Directed By: James Wong.
Written By: Glenn Morgan, James Wong.

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Texas Battle, Alexz Johnson.